The five nominees for this year's visual effects earned a total global box office gross of about $2.8B. The monster earner was "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story" at a little over $1B; rounding out the Visual Effects nominees were "The Jungle Book" at $976M, "Doctor Strange" at $673M, "Deepwater Horizon" at $119M, and "Kubo" at $70M.

It also illustrates the sad state of the visual effects community. The average Oscar nominee for visual effects made over $662 million globally, and yet our industry has relatively little power in Hollywood.

Monday, February 13, 2017

It's time for the Awesomest Oscar Pool Ballot In The History Of Oscar Pool Ballots.Every year I create a special ballot based on a typical Academy Awards printable ballot -- but on my ballot, each category has a different point value. The highest valued category is "Best Picture," while the mainstream films' categories are valued at two points. The non-mainstream categories (like the documentary and short film categories) are valued at one point.

This way, in a tight race for the winner of the pool, the winner most likely would not be determined by the non-mainstream films (in other words, blind guesses). This year, I started with a ballot from Fandango, since Oscar.com didn't make a pretty, printable ballot this year. Again.

Sunday, February 12, 2017

After bloviating in twogiant posts about the reasons we might have incorrectly predicted the Visual Effects Oscar winner last year, we have decided to run the numbers for the 89th Academy Awards, perhaps for the last time:

5.48 points for “The Jungle Book”

4.19 points for “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story”

3.87 points for “Kubo and the Two Strings”

3.17 points for “Deepwater Horizon”

3.09 points for “Doctor Strange”

The charred, withered, barely-breathing remains of The VFX Predictinator predicts that “The Jungle Book” will with the visual effects Oscar in the 89th Academy Awards. Here’s the full set of scores:

Directed by Jon Favreau, “Jungle Book” is a photorealistic live-action film that is nearly fully computer generated. The live-action portions of the film featuring young actor Neel Sethi were filmed on soundstages in Los Angeles. Computer graphics dominate each “Jungle Book” frame in, arguably, the most photoreal, most extensive, and most immersive use of CG environments and characters in a single film. “Jungle Book” advances upon the success of Oscar-winning “Life of Pi” (2012) to a staggering degree. Oh, and all the animals in the film talk, too. (Some even sing.)

“Jungle Book” took the most points in a competitive field this year; only 1.29 points separate “Jungle Book” from its closest competitor, “Rogue One”. Let’s take a look at the Predictinator criteria and how the race worked out for the five films.

A COMPETITIVE SLATE
On a number of fronts, the five Oscar nominated visual effects films are quite competitive. Most significantly, the five films all scored similar Tomatometer ratings from critics. In fact, these five films were the highest rated movies for critical acclaim for the 27 years of Oscar races that we’ve tracked. “Kubo” took home the most points for Critical Acclaim (with its 97% Tomatometer rating), while the lowest rated film was “Deepwater Horizon” with a very strong 83%. While this criteria was competitive, the scores for this category are relative to one another, so “Jungle Book” earned .75 points more than “Deepwater”.

Easily, the highest rated group of Oscar-nominated Visual Effects films in all the years I've tracked (27 years). Probably of all time. pic.twitter.com/dTQiQNPP0d

None of the five films took away more than two Oscar nominations. As a result, no film earned any “Academy” points (a film starts earning “Academy” points only if it earns at least four Oscar nominations). Also, none of the five films were penalized for being a sequel; sequels, historically, are shunned at the Academy Awards. As you may have noticed, we did not label “Rogue One” a sequel. Even though the film is part of a cinematic universe, we decided that since the film follows a new set of characters, rather than a returning set of characters going on another adventure, it does not earn the sequel identity.

As an aside, if we continue running the Predictinator past this year, we are considering clarifying this piece of criteria to possibly include “reboots” and “films in an established cinematic universe”, since we feel like those films are also historically shunned at the Academy Awards.

With $364M domestic box office take, “Jungle Book” was the #2 earner among nominees (after “Rogue One”’s $522M), which decimated the box office point values for “Deepwater” and “Kubo”, since we score box office points relative to one another.

HOW JUNGLE BOOK ENDED ON TOP
“Jungle Book” finished with a score 1.29 points higher than its next closest competitor, “Rogue One”. Most significantly, “Jungle Book” earned an important point for its primary visual effects consisting of organic creatures, and an additional .75 points for facial acting. None of the other four visual effects nominees earned any points in either of these two categories. The magnificent organic character animation in the film gives the movie a leg up, since, historically, the full Academy favors films with synthetic character animation and, particularly, animation that features characters that talk and emote.

The digital human work featured in “Rogue One” we deemed as supporting visual effects, not the primary visual effects created for the film. Space battles, environments, and “the world of Star Wars” are the primary vfx work of the film. We gave the same ruling last year to “The Force Awakens”, which featured computer generated characters Maz and Snoke as supporting visual effects elements.

Similarly, we also deemed the visual effects of “Kubo” to not qualify for ‘organic creature work’ as its primary visual effects. “Kubo”’s nomination for visual effects, the first for an animated film since 1993’s “The Nightmare Before Christmas”, is not without controversy. While live-action and animated films share techniques and concepts, their visually-oriented goals are substantially different. The vast majority of live-action films contain visual effects whose goal is to trick audiences into believing the sequences actually happened in front of real-life cameras, next to real human beings. Animated films do not share the same goal of tricking the audience in this way. Nevertheless, “Kubo” is a nominee, and just as we ruled for “Nightmare”, we deemed the primary visual effects of “Kubo” not to be the character animation in the film, but the creation of the entire world of the film. The art direction, creation, animation and assembly of the entire frame is the visual effect.

You may have noticed that we haven’t yet discussed “Doctor Strange”. Two years ago, we added the ‘is the film based on a comic book?’ criteria, which deducts one Predictinator point. “Strange”’s point value sits it solidly in the middle of the pack, just as most comic book movies typically do. To reiterate our reason for adding this criteria: comic book films have, historically, not been rewarded with visual effects Oscars.

FORGET ABOUT NUMBERS: THE GUT CHECK
We recently went into great detail discussing how our formula may be outdated since we may have already entered a new era of visual effects that renders our old assumptions no longer valid. We also qualified our argument with the “fluke year” defense: “Sometimes the 6000+ members of the Academy think differently than is expected; typically, the very next year, they go back to voting the way that is typically predicted.” This is the main reason we decided to run the numbers for this year’s race; if last year was, indeed, a fluke, then our philosophy remains sound.

Generally speaking, we feel pretty good about “Jungle Book” winning the Oscar; it’s the film that our gut tells us will win. It’s a nearly-universally loved film, with groundbreaking, well-executed visual effects. It was a giant hit, and Academy voters will feel good about rewarding this type of film.

That said, my wife and I have nagging concerns. Putting it mildly, last year’s “Ex Machina” win, which destroyed our formula, burned us pretty badly. As a result, we can’t help but look for potential spoilers, and attempt to pre-explain their potential victories.

POTENTIAL SPOILERS
The two potential spoilers of this race are, in our mind, “Deepwater” and “Kubo”. The two films are the least “Hollywood” of the five films, and considering the “Ex Machina” win from last year, we need to pay attention to these two well-regarded films.

“Deepwater” features a man vs. nature narrative (as opposed to the typical protagonist/antagonist structure of the three other nominees), whose visual effects strongly support the narrative, rather than serve the purpose of pure spectacle. Academy voters sometimes shun typically structured films with “good guys/bad guys”, especially when there’s a worthwhile alternative worth rewarding (“Hugo”, “Benjamin Button”, “Gravity” and “Life of Pi” are recent examples that come to mind).

“Kubo” is a strong contender as well, considering the film represents a magnificent achievement in hand-created stop motion animation (along with a healthy, significant amount of computer graphics and digital compositing). Academy voters could vote for “Kubo” as a protest against computer graphics; “CGI is ruining movies!”, a misguided trope, still has traction in 2017. Even though a predominantly stop-motion animated film like “Kubo” couldn’t exist without modern technology, average Academy voters could reward the film as the anti-CGI nominee.

And, had “Arrival” made it past the bake-off to become a nominee, I’d be shouting from the rooftops that it could easily become this year’s “Ex Machina”. If “Arrival” earned a Visual Effects Oscar nomination, it would have earned nine Oscar nominations, and been a force to be reckoned with. (No, we are NOT going to run the numbers with “Arrival” as a nominee. It’s a lot of work. Feel free to do so on your own.)

SORTA-INTERESTING DETAILS
For only the second time in the last nine years, none of this year’s visual effects nominees also have a Best Picture nomination. In contrast, last year, three out of the five nominees were nominated for Best Picture (“Revenant”, “Mad Max: Fury Road” and “The Martian”). In addition, only one out of the ten films that participated in the visual effects bake-off was ultimately nominated for Best Picture (“Arrival”).

Thursday, February 09, 2017

On February 7, "The Jungle Book" won five top awards at the 15th VES Awards, held by The Visual Effects Society.

"The Jungle Book" won all five of the categories in which the film was nominated. The other big winner was "Deepwater Horizon", which won two awards, including Outstanding Supporting Visual Effects. "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story" which earned the most nominations, did not take home any awards. See the full list of nominees here.

After much thought, we believe that the visual effects industry may have entered into a new era of its storied history. The first chapter of the digital era, launched with 1989’s “The Abyss” and its never-before-seen visual effects of the pseudopod, has ended, and a new chapter of visual effects history, the "post-digital" era, may have already begun. The high expectations of stellar-quality visual effects because of digital effects’ democratization and easier accessibility have exploded; a greater-than-ever diversity of films that can harness the power of visual effects is now a reality. If true, this destroys previous assumptions about the predictability of Visual Effects Oscar winners; the "post-digital" era cannot support the same criteria of The Predictinator, which provided accurate predictions of Best Visual Effects Oscar winners from 1989-2014, the digital era.

In 2015, after the 1.0 version of The Predictinator incorrectly predicted “Guardians of the Galaxy” instead of “Interstellar”, we made a slight tweak to the algorithm. We managed to plug the hole in our formula by giving negative points to comic book movies, as we believe Academy voters think films that are based on comic books are less worthy of award. Ultimately, the formula remained accurate through to 1989 (and even strengthened many historical races). In last year’s article, my wife and I pondered a fundamental question, to determine if a larger change is occurring with how the Academy votes for visual effects winners, one that would ultimately break our formula:

• Has there been a slow change in how visual effects films are perceived by the Academy, causing members to vote differently?

Last year, after examining the changes that have been emerging over the last seven years, I wrote this about digital characters: “Audiences now expect Gollum-quality digital characters in their films, and the Academy may no longer reward a film solely for hitting this quality standard.” I now realize that I was probably too specific with this sentiment, limiting the idea to only digital characters. Academy voters and audiences not only expect stellar synthetic characters and creatures, but expect world-class, quality visual effects in every film--not limited solely to synthetic characters, and not solely from big-budget blockbusters like “Titanic”, “Lord of the Rings” or “Pirates of the Caribbean” films. Expect smaller, more intimate, less spectacle-based films like “Hugo” and “Ex Machina” winning visual effects Oscars in the future, if this is indeed the case.

We may have also underestimated the impact of the visual effects moving from three nominees to five. Films that would might not have made it past the bake-off with only three slots are now sliding in with five nominees, and sometimes winning the Oscar. Arguably, “Ex Machina” and “Hugo” would not have made it past the bake-off if our category still only was given three nomination slots. (As a reminder, the nominees are decided upon at a bake-off of films, and are chosen by the visual effects branch of the Academy.)

In fact, the expansion of the Visual Effects Academy Award from three to five nominees in 2010 represents an indication of the industry’s maturation, potentially marking the start of the post-digital era. No longer is the craft of visual effects a second-class citizen; this change was long overdue and richly deserved.

Furthermore, we see a trend of Academy voters actively shunning giant, franchise movies. Without the aid of some kind of visual effects breakthrough, we foresee reboots, sequels, Marvel comic book movies, and Star Wars movies not winning Academy Awards as often as they used to. Just look at the last eight visual effects Oscar winners for proof: “Ex Machina”, “Interstellar”, “Gravity”, “Life of Pi”, “Hugo”, “Inception”, “Avatar”, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” and “The Golden Compass”.

The first chapter of the digital age of filmmaking might be over, and a new post-digital chapter may have begun. Needless to say, The VFX Predictinator operates within a series of assumptions and quantifiable data to support those assumptions that may no longer be valid in the post-digital era.

In 1989, “The Abyss” marked the dawn of the digital era of Hollywood visual effects: computer graphics and digital compositing supplanted physical models, traditional matte paintings, and optical compositing and ultimately expanded the filmmaking possibilities. The digital era heralded storytelling of a different kind (a liquid metal Terminator, ultra-realistic dinosaurs, bullet time), and audiences have reaped the benefits for over two decades. The ubiquity of digital filmmaking and the maturation of the visual effects community has turned visual effects into a commodity, a value that is no longer exclusive to a certain type of film.

Our entire philosophy behind the predictability of Oscar voters has changed. With five nominees, the nominated movies frequently represent a greater variety of films. No longer are mind-blowing visual effects relegated to a precious few tentpole films, no longer are digital effects relegated to the few directors (Robert Zemeckis, James Cameron, Peter Jackson) who dared swim the dangerous waters of digital technology and turn it into art. Filmmakers like Ang Lee, Martin Scorsese, David Fincher and Alex Garland have access to the world’s talented visual effects artists and technicians, and the landscape of filmmaking is better off because of their access.

I can hear you asking from across the internet: “Yeah yeah yeah, well, are you going to run the numbers?” As you have just read, we’re not entirely convinced The VFX Predictinator, in its current state, is still valid. But we’ll run the numbers. Stay tuned.

Wednesday, February 01, 2017

2016 was a year of earth-shattering upsets: the Chicago Cubs won the World Series. Donald J. Trump won the American presidential election. And “Ex Machina” won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects.

Needless to say, we were shocked by “Ex Machina”’s win at the 88th Academy Awards over here at The VFX Predictinator Headquarters. This upset didn’t just shake the pillars of the mighty VFX Predictinator, it shattered the entire philosophy into smithereens.

The visual effects category has seen a few upsets in its day. Typically, the award goes to the behemoth of the category (think “Avatar”, “Jurassic Park” and “Forrest Gump”). Most recently, the most memorable upsets include “Hugo”’s win over “Rise of the Planet of the Apes”, “Babe”’s win over “Apollo 13”, and “The Golden Compass”’s win over “Transformers”. As shocking as those upsets were, our VFX Predictinator accurately predicted those races. (Yes, even “Hugo”.) We understand how those films won, since they each earned their victory with just enough points of criteria as dictated by The Predictinator.

We have no idea how “Ex Machina” won. Our formula, which correctly predicted the winner of the Visual Effects Oscar from 1989-2014, was completely wrong.

Its victory upends our philosophy. There is no model to explain what happened. Alex Garland’s film is imaginative, thought-provoking, and beautiful. The quiet, modest and understated visual effects that support the film are of the highest quality; the depiction of Ava (Alicia Vikander) was both technically flawless and aesthetically gorgeous.

I’ll touch on the highlights of last year’s numbers (to read the entire analysis, read The VFX Predictinator, 88th Academy Awards Edition). By all accounts, it was “The Revenant”’s Oscar to win; Alejandro Inarritu’s film was nominated for twelve Oscars (and ultimately won for Director, Actor and Cinematography), and soared with pre-awards Oscar buzz. It was a solid hit, and also earned key points since the primary visual effects for the film consisted of an organic creature. “Mad Max: Fury Road” was close behind in the scores; the film was also a critical darling and ultimately won a staggering six Oscars from its ten nominations. “The Revenant”, “Mad Max: Fury Road” and “The Martian” (another visual effects nominee), were all nominated for Best Picture, as well.

Then there was that universally-loved, gargantuan blockbuster which earned over $2 billion, “The Force Awakens”.

In contrast, “Ex Machina”, while highly respected and a critical darling, was barely on the radar. Yes, it earned two Oscar nominations (Visual Effects and Original Screenplay); in contrast, the other visual effects nominees earned five, seven, ten and twelve nominations. Surprisingly, “Ex Machina” didn’t even earn a single nomination at the Visual Effects Society Awards, which has eight feature film categories. The film earned $25M in the U.S.; the film with the next lowest box office score was “The Revenant”, with $119M.

From a purely statistical point of view, these numbers simply don’t point to a victory for “Ex Machina”. In fact, the film earned the least number of points from The Predictinator of the five nominees. Looking at the scene from a less numbers-driven perspective, the visual effects for “Ex Machina” were beautifully designed and executed, but one could argue the challenges tackled and achieved for the film did not rise to the level of past visual effects Oscar winners, which made its victory surprising to so many industry watchers. Some voices have expressed a similar sentiment for “Babe”, “The Golden Compass” and “Hugo” as well, but those victories are, for the most part, explainable. I have yet to hear a rational explanation of how the Academy’s 6000+ members cast more votes for “Ex Machina” over its competition, probably because I believe(d) so strongly in the philosophy behind our formula.

Let’s look at some of the theories I've heard that attempt to explain the “Ex Machina” win.

THE SPLIT VOTE
This theory states that the front-runners’ votes (in sum totaling a near-majority) were split right down the middle, allowing an underdog to sneak in and grab a victory. Let’s say the front-runners were “Mad Max: Fury Road” and “The Revenant”, and they each earned precisely 32% of the vote. As front-runners, the two films garnering 64% of the vote seems plausible. That leaves “Ex Machina” to swing in with 35% of the vote and win victory, right? But this only works if zero percent of Academy voters voted for “The Force Awakens” or “The Martian”, which isn’t likely.

Okay, so what if “Fury Road”, “Revenant” and “The Force Awakens” split the near-majority vote? For this to work, each of the three films would have to earn precisely 24.9% each, leaving “Ex Machina” with 25.3% of the vote and the win--assuming zero votes for “The Martian”. As a reminder, with five nominees, the absolute minimum percentage of votes required to win is 20.1%.

IT'S AN ACTOR'S MOVIE
This theory is based on the idea that actors, the largest single branch of the Academy membership, prefer to vote for performance-heavy films, typically shunning visual-effects driven blockbusters, even in the ‘technical’ categories such as Editing, Cinematography and Visual Effects. (Reminder, the full Academy membership votes for the Oscar winners, not individual branches.) Typically, this would mean the actors’ branch would shun films like “Transformers”, “Poseidon”, and “The Avengers”, which, as the theory goes, wallow in spectacle at the expense of human characters.

Giving some credence to this theory is the fact that Alicia Vikander, star of “Ex Machina”, won an acting Oscar Academy Award last year--but for a different film. She took home a Best Supporting Actress award for her work on “The Danish Girl”. Was “Ex Machina” riding the buzz and momentum that ultimately awarded Vikander an Oscar? This idea becomes far less likely once one is reminded that “The Revenant” featured megastar Leonardo DiCaprio, the actor who took home a Best Actor role for the very same film. It’s more likely that “The Revenant” (starring a man who already had four Oscar nominations and ten Golden Globe nominations under his belt) would benefit more from the ‘halo effect’ of momentum than “Ex Machina”, starring the relative-newcomer Vikander.

In addition, The Predictinator attempts to account for a bit of ‘actor prestige’, with a piece of criteria dedicated to acting: ‘has the lead actor of a film previously won an acting Academy Award?’

A FLUKE YEAR
This idea takes the point of view that the grand philosophy of The Predicinator is solid, and the Academy voting block, riding an un-predicted massive wave of goodwill toward "Ex Machina", voted for it in overwhelming numbers. There's no denying the visual effects for "Ex Machina" were beautiful and compelling; it rightfully earned its stellar reviews. Similar to Marisa Tomei's acting win for "My Cousin Vinny", or "Shakespeare in Love" winning Best Picture (over "Saving Private Ryan"), sometimes the 6000+ members of the Academy think differently than is expected; typically, the very next year, they go back to voting the way that is typically predicted.

THE PARADIGM HAS CHANGED
Something has changed in the way visual effects are being evaluated, interpreted and understood. The art and science of digital visual effects have matured to such an extent that, perhaps, a new chapter in the history of filmmaking has begun. Our previous assumptions no longer are true, and therefore, our formula has begun to crumble.

In Part 2, we’ll discuss this idea and illustrate how it affected the results of The VFX Predictinator. Here's Part 2.

FXRant by Todd Vaziri

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About Me

my name is todd vaziri and i do stuff. you can electronically mail me feedback at tvaziri@gmail.com.
this blogy thingy is just a big experiment, so we'll see how it goes. you'll see posts on film, visual effects, media, current events, and whatever gibberish is floating in my melon.